Fangraphs is one of my favorite sites, but surprise...I find little value in the stats. But, for a baseball junkie and stat guy, this is just baseball-porn, and I wish I could force all fans to read that kind of stat-porn. But, personally, I don't see any value in the stats because I have the rare baseball experience that makes me look at the analysis and go "no shit, Sherlock".
Don't get me wrong, I love the zone breakdowns on hitters. Take for instance, this graph image of young phenom Jason Heyward and his first week at the MLB.
What this map tells you is that Jason Heyward -- a gifted, exciting, lightening-fast 6' 4"/240lb freak of nature -- is hitting fastballs well, and swinging over the top of "off speed" pitches located in the dirt. For stat guys or a sports guys, this is interesting. For baseball-stat guy, this is scintillating. For a guy that played baseball at a high level or is currently in the big leagues, this graph is like a five-year-old's treasure map of the front yard that clearly leads to the freshly-dug dirt pile in the middle of your lawn with an "x" marking the spot.
To explain further, anyone that has one week of college or pro baseball can look at 20-year-old Jason Heyward in a uniform and think "Okay, young, powerful, keep the fastball down and away early in the count and bounce the curveball if you're even or ahead in the count. If you want to waste a pitch, go high and hard." That's it.
Why is this so obvious? Because in the 100+ years of the "modern era" baseball (literally, since players were getting paid to throw overhand), there have been hundreds of Jason Heywards. A few of them learned plate discipline quickly, and became outstanding players (see Ken Griffey Jr., Barry Bonds). A lot of them never learned plate discipline and just got really good at hitting mistakes (see Ken Griffey Sr., Bobby Bonds). And, more became "projects" or "organizational players", or worse.
Here's the underlying explanation: A young kid that hits a fastball a ton, gets aggressive and looks to feast on fastballs. And, even as a player advances through levels of baseball, if they're good enough, they can take the one or two fastballs they get and do damage, wherever the pitch is located (i.e. Vladimir Guerrero, Pablo Sandoval). Hell, my three-year-old son is that guy right now. But, at some point, pitchers will remove fastballs altogether. And, even if a young hitter wants to lay-off of breaking balls, in MLB, pitchers throw nasty breaking stuff that leaves the hand looking like a fastball. Baseball is just NOT fair to hitters. Reminder to everyone, no one has hit safely better than 40% of at bats in 69 years (Ted Williams hit .406 in 1941).
Right now, Heyward doesn't know he is swinging over sliders. He is reading location and hand-release, and his instincts and reaction are punishing any fastball in the zone. He is just happy to be in Atlanta and collecting $300 per diem. At some point this month, he'll understand that collectively, the NL pitchers are bouncing sliders and curves in each of his plate appearances. But, as soon as he learns how to read a breaking ball, pitchers will start throwing breaking pitches to the corners in minus-counts, hoping to get called strikes. Heyward should start "thinking" in the box and guessing at what pitch is coming next, taking away his aggressive "see-ball-hit-ball" mentality. At that point, he'll have a new development milestone, a new lesson to learn.
Fangraphs stimulates a knowledge exchange like this, and the editorial does a great job of interpreting the stats and explaining what's going on for the fan, for the stat guy. But, the graphs aren't terribly useful. I could have told you what would happen to Jason Bey with a glance at his uniform and one box-score.
One more example: Today's MLB section of ESPN is touting Big Papi's struggles as an issue of pitch selection. That headline is like a doctor running into your bedroom saying, "I have an explanation for your vomiting and fever -- you have a virus, it's not cancer." My response to both diagnostics reports is a sarcastic "REALLY?!".
In reality, Papi, isn't suffering from "pitch selection issues" -- that's a developmental condition for young guys like Jason Heyward. At 34, David Ortiz is old (for the game, not 'for this erf'), and so he is pressing, and he is cracking under the media scrutiny. For examples of cracking, see other symptoms, such as referring to himself in the third person and telling the media that "big papi sucks", and then spewing 30 expletives in a 12-second outburst in response to the simple question, "why are you 0-for-lifetime against Andy Pettitte?"
Hitting .136 with a .208 OBP as a DH in clean-up, Papi is trying to stay in the lineup, so of course he is swinging at fastballs outside of the zone. That's what everyone does when they are cracking under scrutiny. Papi has 13 years of service, and he officially overpaid by any unit of measure. Media scrutiny of his PED admissions is rightfully creating more stress, because he is battling the very real interpretation that he was never as good as his ALCS MVPs would suggest -- he was an enhanced Papi whilst no one was checking, and his current public image as a fraud is his real player potential.
Plate discipline at Papi's age is about confidence and composure, it's not an issue of learning to be disciplined. Like Giambi before him, Papi has to be going through a panic right now... but I digress.
Why do I love FanGraphs? Because it's a giant conversation aid for people that love baseball, but don't know enough to truly understand the game at the player or manager level. But, when I find someone comes at me with a question, like, "why is this happening?" Instead of making a comment or observation showing a fan or sports writer's understanding of the game, I'm much more engaged and interested in having a conversation that reaches into the depths of baseball knowledge that I rarely touch on. Ultimately, the Fangraphs and other metrics-driven sites are good for the game, good for creating a new generation of stat-driven fans, like the card-sharks and rotisserie players of the past.
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